HOME-BUYING PLAN GOAL: COPS GET HOUSES, NEIGHBORHOODS GET COPS

Roderick Gardner's home life bucks the stereotype of a Chicago police officer.

He doesn't live in Jefferson Park, Chicago Lawn or Beverly, solid middle-class neighborhoods that are havens for thousands of police employees.

Instead, Gardner lives in the East Garfield Park community, a low-income neighborhood that is burdened with a disproportionate share of the city's violent crime.

He is one of just 162 police employees-a tiny fraction of the 17,000 in the department-who live within the borders of the Harrison Police District, which includes East Garfield Park and similar West Side neighborhoods.

But Gardner, who also works in the Harrison District, said he hopes to settle in East Garfield Park for a long time with the help of a new pilot program that gives police officers who have never owned homes financial incentives to buy homes in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

Approved last week by the City Council, the program offers police officers buying their first home a one-time, $5,000 subsidy and requires them to pay only a 3 percent down payment to acquire a mortgage. Officers must promise to live in the homes five years.

The goal is to lure police officers out of the relatively safe, stable neighborhoods where most of them live, into more economically depressed communities. There, advocates of the plan say, the police officers will help revitalize the community and make their neighbors feel safer.

It is part of a nationwide trend among police departments to convince their officers to live in declining neighborhoods. Similar programs are under way in northwest suburban Elgin and in Columbia, S.C.

"With this, police become permanent fixtures in the neighborhood," said Ald. Ed Smith, who proposed the plan to the Chicago City Council. Smith, whose 28th Ward includes much of the West Side, hopes it eventually will reduce crime in the targeted neighborhoods: Austin, Marquette Park, Englewood, Morgan Park, East Garfield Park, Lawndale, Roseland, West Garfield Park and Rogers Park.

Living in East Garfield Park is "beneficial (because) I know the people in the neighborhood," Gardner said. "If they have any problems or questions, they come to me."

Sometimes, the request is simply to have an unsightly abandoned car removed from the alley, he said. "It alleviates a lot of fears and makes us (police officers) more approachable."

But Gardner, 32 and single, said he has a practical rather than social motive for wanting to buy a home on the West Side: It's close to work.

Other officers said they are interested in Smith's plan simply because it's a good deal.

"I need a house," said Lorie O'Shea, 39, a Marquette District officer. "I have five children and am tired of living in an apartment.

`I opened an account with the credit union, and I was building up a down payment slowly," said O'Shea, who lives in Brighton Park on the Southwest Side, and hopes to buy a home nearby. "This hopefully will speed up the process."

Despite the initial enthusiasm, the home-ownership program, at least in the short-run, is not likely to do much to spread Chicago's police force more evenly among the city's 25 police districts.

The program, which is starting with $100,000, will benefit only 20 officers, though Smith hopes to expand it. And some of the first officers who take advantage of the program are likely to be those who already live in the targeted neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the majority of city cops are concentrated in a select group of neighborhoods outside the central city.

Nearly 60 percent of police employees-9,952 of 16,946-live in just four police districts: Jefferson Park on the Northwest Side; Chicago Lawn on the Southwest Side; Morgan Park on the Far Southwest Side; and South Chicago on the Far Southeast Side, a computer analysis found.

The analysis, conducted by the police department at the Tribune's request, included all of the department's employees.

It found that the Jefferson Park district has the most police employees per capita, 18 per 1,000 residents, followed by the Chicago Lawn district, with 17.7 per 1,000, the Morgan Park district with 16.2 per 1,000, and the South Chicago district with 12.8 per 1,000.

The districts with the fewest numbers of police employees tend to have housing that is either too expensive for most police or has relatively high crime rates.

Ernest Jenkins, of the Westside Association for Community Action, called the home-ownership program "excellent" because police officers would have a personal stake in the safety of their neighborhoods.

But some officers balked at the idea of intermingling work with their most private hours.

Andrew Burns, 39, an Englewood patrol officer, lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Beverly with his wife and 1-year-old son. He said he hopes to qualify for the home-ownership program so he can buy a home in nearby Morgan Park.

But Burns said he wouldn't consider living in the Englewood neighborhood. "I don't want to live in the same district I work in," he said. "You're locking up people in that district. I don't want to jeopardize my family."

Officer C. Brown said she will settle in East Garfield Park-the neighborhood where she grew up-if she qualifies for the home-ownership program.

"I grew up over here, and my family is here to support me and my daughter," said Brown, 31, who works in the Austin District.

But she said she will only go so far to involve herself in patrolling the neighborhood when she's off-duty. Any crime tips she gets will be passed on to 911 or other officers.

"I'm obligated to do something if I see a crime taking place," she said. "(But) I don't want to be the police 24 hours a day."